Is There a Clear Explanation for A-Consciousness?

[RAD4921]

The universe is self aware because WE are self aware. If anyone argues this then I would then question as to how self ware THEY are.

 

[quantumdude]

I'd like to point out that this does not meet the quality standards for our Philosophy section. Please see the Guidelines and try to flesh out your argument.

Thank you,

 

[Drayakir]

I think what he is trying to say is that the Universe is self-aware because some components of the Universe are self-aware. True. Though I think the Universe is far too large in order to be self-aware, or be capable of any type of thought. At most it could be like an organism reacting to stimuli; and that is debatable as well. The Brothers Strugatsky have mentioned something like this in their book about the World Homeostasis, where the Universe would retaliate against things/ideas/people that might bring about the end of the world by tampering with laws of nature (i.e. changing them instead of accepting them).

 

[quantumdude]

I think what he is trying to say is that the Universe is self-aware because some components of the Universe are self-aware.

Your guess is as good as mine. But if that is what he meant, then it can only lead to one of 2 dead ends.

First, he could argue the position that since physical objects and processes give rise to beings that are "self aware", that means that the universe must have been self aware to begin with. But this is just an argument from the fallacy of composition.

Second, he could simply define a composite structure as "self aware" as long as some part of it is self aware, in which case there's no room for discussion.

 

[Kerrie]

RAD, instead of making these claims, why don't you state why you believe this to be true, and please provide some solid arguments.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I still think the point is missed. We are of the universe and we are self aware, so the universe is self aware. Not the entire universe, and not necessarily in any sense beyond our awareness, but at the least it is aware "as" us. This does not imply that the universe was self aware before we came to be.

 

[quantumdude]

it is aware "as" us.

That would be the second of the two possibilities I mentioned. It still leaves me wondering: How does one establish such a notion, apart from simply defining it to be the case?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

How can we be considered separate from the universe?

We are star stuff and all of that...

 

[loseyourname]

That would be the second of the two possibilities I mentioned. It still leaves me wondering: How does one establish such a notion, apart from simply defining it to be the case?

I don't see how it does. You can say part of the universe is self-aware, but it is fallacious to assign an attribute to an entity simply because some of its constituent parts possesses that attribute. The form of the argument: X is p. X is a part of Y. Therefore, Y is p. Clearly this is not valid, as demonstrated by the ridiculous analogy: Sperm are single-celled flagellated organisms. Sperm are a part of human males. Therefore, human males are single-celled flagellated organisms.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I guess the only objection is that the statement did not require that the universe was conscious before we came to be. It is not proof of eternal consciousness, but at least as long as we exist it does.

 

[loseyourname]

How can we be considered separate from the universe?

We are star stuff and all of that...

If self-awareness is an attribute of star stuff, then Moses conclusion would be true. If, however, self-awareness is an emergent property of star-stuff that only exists when star-stuff is organized into human brains, then his conclusion is not true. I've seen decent arguments for panexperientialism, but panpsychism is another story entirely. For one thing, what kind of a "self" would star stuff be aware of?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

...sounds anthropocentric to me. We are just complicated star stuff.

 

[quantumdude]

I don't see how it does. You can say part of the universe is self-aware, but it is fallacious to assign an attribute to an entity simply because some of its constituent parts possesses that attribute.

Bingo. That's precisely the fallacy of composition, which I mentioned earlier in this thread. The only other way I can think of to say that "the universe is self aware" is to define self-awareness to be an attribute possessed by a whole if it is possessed by one of its parts. But in that case, you trade in a logical fallacy for an empty tautology.

How can we be considered separate from the universe?

We can't. That's why the definition of self awareness I stated above works. The problem is that it only works in a way that is trivially true.

 

[Moses]

Mmmm...even it will sound odd, i will say it:

First, i agree with loseyourname about his statement about, i have another example to strenghten the argument: Four balls, three yellow and one black, if one is black, never means the other three yellows are black! We are the balck ball, and the universe is the four balls in this example...

I do think that the universe is sel-awarse, stopens, trees, all of the atoms and waves, since they "apply" some laws. I do believe in a Universe-Master, by logic of course, if he created the universe and "programmed" the laws there, so his creatures should be aware of these laws in order to apply, from chemical to biological to physical laws, from trees to stones to stars. We are, the human being, in a very high level of awareness, this is why may be The Universe Master may send a religion to us...[actually i do believe He sent one already, which it is not out topic here...]

 

[Canute]

I suppose then we are committing a fallacy to say that human beings are self-aware. After all, our toes aren't conscious. Instead we must say that human brains are self-aware. But then, we don't know if consciousness emerges from brains, so to be accurate we must say that some part of the universe is self-aware, but we don't yet know which part.

 

[quantumdude]

I suppose then we are committing a fallacy to say that human beings are self-aware. After all, our toes aren't conscious.

Well that's true, but there's a difference. My toes aren't conscious, but I am conscious of my toes. That is, I receive what you philosophers call "qualia" through them (right now I can feel my shoes pressing against them). Surely then we can attach a meaningful difference between my toes and a cloud of interstellar dust, no?

 

[Bartholomew]

Why would you assume your toes are not conscious? I assume my toes are conscious.

 

[RAD4921]

Guidelines

I'd like to point out that this does not meet the quality standards for our Philosophy section. Please see the Guidelines and try to flesh out your argument.

Thank you,

I will go over the guidelines as you suggested. I hope I didn't breach any type of forum etiquette. I do apologize.
I didn’t mean to make it sound like “put up your dukes and let's go at it”
It is VERY interesting to see the path this thread is starting to take. It makes me see the different facets of how people perceive this statement and opens up my mind to other possibilities.

 

[Kerrie]

thank you for clarifying your stand RAD4921...this forum has had it's share of crackpots, thus our reason for making guidelines...sometimes the context or tone isn't conveyed accurately through our posts too.

 

[RAD4921]

I agree

Why would you assume your toes are not conscious? I assume my toes are conscious.

How do we know what is conscious and what isn't? How do we know what is self aware and what isn't? How do I know if an atom in the belly of a star is aware of itself? It may sound absurd to some but it is certainly a possible. Of course all of this is making assumptions. I see what Tom and Loseyour name are saying. Maybe the "self awareness" I am speaking of is not as self aware as I thought. Maybe there is greater self awareness or what the self wareness I speak of is an illusion of some type and the universe is not self aware at all. I don't think going to a dictionary and looking up "self awareness" is going to solve these questions I have.

 

[RAD4921]

Editting

thank you for clarifying your stand RAD4921...this forum has had it's share of crackpots, thus our reason for making guidelines...sometimes the context or tone isn't conveyed accurately through our posts too.

Is there a way I can omit the last sentence of my initial thread posting so that it does not sound so offenseive? I didn't realize how confrontation it sounds. Thanks
Robert

 

[hypnagogue]

It's dangerous to equate "self-awareness" with "consciousness." It's difficult to capture exactly what we mean by self-awareness, but minimially, our concept of self-awareness will probably include some sort of functional or informational concepts-- e.g., if a system is self-aware, it will have access to information about itself via some causal/functional mechanism. Thus, self-awareness seems to be primarily an objective phenomena evaluable by 3rd person investigation.

"Consciousness" is a 'mongrel' concept that has come to mean many things, including self-awareness. But the really unique, interesting, and problematic aspect of consciousness is what is varyingly called qualia, subjective experience, phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness), raw feels, etc. These terms all refer to the visceral, experiential aspect of consciousness; the emotional feeling of sadness, the redness of red, the smell of fresh pancakes, etc. P-consciousness presents significant epistemological problems, because for instance I have access to my own qualia but not to those of others; I cannot jump into another person's head and experience what he experiences. Thus, P-consciousness seems to be primarily a subjective phenomenon evaluable only by 1st person investigation.

Depending on which of these terms we're working with, our arguments will take different courses. For instance, I can say with confidence that my toes are not self-aware; to do this, I just need to observe their physical structure and ascertain that there are no higher level, self-referential information structures present there. However, the question of whether my toes have subjective experience is a much trickier one, and no matter my route of reasoning I must have less confidence on my conclusion, due to the problems of epistemological access for qualia (roughly the problem of other minds).

 

[loseyourname]

I suppose then we are committing a fallacy to say that human beings are self-aware. After all, our toes aren't conscious. Instead we must say that human brains are self-aware. But then, we don't know if consciousness emerges from brains, so to be accurate we must say that some part of the universe is self-aware, but we don't yet know which part.

This depends on two things. First, there is the possibility of non-conscious panexperientialism that could include every irreducible component of the human body. When I say non-conscious, I mean simply that this form of experience would not be the form of experience involving active computational processes that are commonly associated with human consciousness. In this way, our toes may very well be capable of some form of visceral experience unrecognizable to the human imagination, but this would not rise to the computational level of the human mind.

In addition, we have the question of exactly what constitutes a "self" to be aware of? In the case of the human mind, it seems to be the fact that the mind can see itself as the continuing subject of coherent experience, a phenomenon contingent on both memory and the ability to project oneself into the future. On this level, a toe cannot be considered self-aware, being unable to conceive of its existence as the existence of a "self," simply because it does not possesses the computational capacity to conceive, period.

To address your question of whether or not it is fallacious to call a human being self-aware, we must first consider what it meant by "human being." Do we mean simply "the human body." In that case, it would be fallacious, because under the restrictions established above, the body cannot conceive of itself as a continuing subject of experience. The mind may be able to conceive of the body as a continuing subject of experience (although this experience would likely not be the same kind of qualitative experience engaged in by the mind), but the mind is not the body. Even equating mind with brain and thus saying "the brain is self-aware" might be fallacious in this respect, because there are plenty of components in the brain that do not perform any computational function that can be considered "conceiving of itself as a continuing subject of experience." It is suggested, and I would say likely true, that there are components in the brain that are capable of conceiving of such a self, and it is strictly these components (that either partially make up or entirely constitute the "mind") that can be called self-aware under the above restrictions.

So the question of fallacy becomes a question of whether by "human being" we mean "human body" or we simply mean that part of the human body - also a part of the human brain - that is capable of conceiving of itself as a continuing subject of experience. It also becomes a question of whether we will allow the entire body to be considered self-aware, given that the conceptually capable part of it conceives of the entire body as a continuing subject of experience. If we answer the second question in the affirmative, then we have some pretty interesting implications pertaining to the self-awareness of larger entities of which the bodies themselves are a part (in principle, up to and including the entire universe), and for that reason, I am inclined to answer the second question in the negative.

 

[3mpathy]

can we say that? that there is a self aware part of the universe, but we don't know where is it? that sounds odd to me.

 

[loseyourname]

can we say that? that there is a self aware part of the universe, but we don't know where is it? that sounds odd to me.

I wouldn't say that. I would say that there is at least one self-aware element to the universe, and it resides in my brain. There are likely approximately 6 billion other self-aware parts of the universe, and they reside in the brains of every other living human being. There exists the possibility that there are other self-aware parts as well, but as of now, I have no evidence to suggest the realization of this possibility.

 

[3mpathy]

"Wait! I might be confused? Errr...maybe I'm not..."

wow, lol quick responce. took like 30 seconds. i was about to edit my post and say apologize becuz i was trying to post on the first page(didnt see the #2) and therefore i didnt read anything on this page before i posted. sry for saying anything stupid that has already been asked above.



im a little bit confused by your post.are u saying that u think that you are selfaware and u can't prove it, or that all 6million ppl are self-aware and u can't prove it? or are u saying that there might be other self aware parts of this universe and u can't prove it? what can't u prove?

 

[loseyourname]

I cannot prove my own self-awareness if by "prove" you mean prove it to you or to someone else. But I can be certain of my own self-awareness, even if I cannot make anyone else certain of it. By extension, I cannot prove that anyone else is self-aware, but all of the relevant evidence suggests that they are, all 6 billion of them, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise. By "there exists the possibility that there are other self-aware parts as well," I meant that there might be non-human life forms, either on this planet, or elsewhere in the universe, that are self-aware, but I cannot at this time point to much evidence either in favor of or against this possibility.

 

[3mpathy]

ok thank you for clarifying.i was thinking that you were trying to say that the other self-aware things were ghost or God or something of that nature. I understand it now.

btw cool quote thingie. could you say that the variations of wave pressure are the symphony but just not really understandable to humans? so it would make sense...just not to humans :P

 

[TENYEARS]

What would any of you consider proof that conciousness is a quality not of the brain. For example thing I can and have done is left my body with my dream body and physically connected with others. What proof would one consider that this occurred. For example I once entered the dream of another and the individual was extremely frightened. The next day in a round about way I asked the individual how they slept. They said they had a horrible dream and was very shaken. The individual percienved my presence but did not know it was me. When I witnessed them they saw me in a state of absolute horror. I never before asked this individual how they slept and this individual has never relayed any type of horrible dream. The mind creates an overlay on this greater reality but is partly aware. This happens all the time. And listening to some of these posts it apparently happens during the day for many. LoL

Note: I have never met a cetain actress and yet I was drawn into a dream of hers one night and instructed her certain things. If you were to consult this individual you would find that on January 3rd of 2003 she had a particular dream which I could describe and she would remember. LoL You may not believe but it is true. I do not do this by will usually, it seems to come for the most by the need of the individual and is very infrequent unless I am doing experienmentation like I was over 16 years ago. I could do it with continaual effort which took 1.5 years to achieve. This may push some of you over the edge and into experience. I remember the day I was able to do it for the first time. It was caused by my reading something where it hit me in a way that I recognized that it was indeed possible. Some will question your mind makes it possible. Maybe, maybe the mind connects with other minds via the fact that they are already connected but there is no external body outside this one. Maybe again and maybe not. Time will tell but I have also witnessed the dead. Good night.

 

[Kerrie]

TENYEARS, please explain what your above post has to do with the topic? I am really trying to hold back on the delete button...